Archive for the ‘Change & Innovation’ Category

Dona Collins at Technorati writes about The Rise of Online Colleges and Online Education. This useful article discusses:

• Popularity of Online Degrees
• Online Colleges vs. Traditional Colleges
• The Benefits of Online Classes
• What to Expect From Online Classes

James Leynse for The New York Times
Martin K. Foys, a medievalist at Drew University in Madison, N.J., created a digital map of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Patricia Cohen at the New York Times writes about A Digital Key for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches. This engaging article explores how digital humanities scholars are using data and conducting research in the information age.

“Members of a new generation of digitally savvy humanists argue it is time to stop looking for inspiration in the next political or philosophical “ism” and start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts. This latest frontier is about method, they say, using powerful technologies and vast stores of digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have.”

via Gerry McKiernan

Image Credit: Matt McLoone for The Wall Street Journal

Conor Dougherty at the Wall Street Journal reports that New Library Technologies Dispense With Librarians. This is an interesting article about innovative “express” libraries that deliver books and media to library patrons while reducing labor costs.

“HUGO, Minn.—In this suburb of St. Paul, the new library branch has no librarians, no card catalog and no comfortable chairs in which to curl up and read. Instead, the Library Express is a stack of metal lockers outside city hall. When patrons want a book or DVD, they order it online and pick it up from a digitally locked, glove-compartment- sized cubby a few days later. It’s a library as conceived by the Amazon.com generation.”

Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2011. Each year the Gartner group puts together this visionary list of tech that will prove to be influential in the coming year. Here they are:

1. Cloud Computing
2. Mobile Applications and Media Tablets
3. Social Communications and Collaboration
4. Video
5. Next Generation Analytics
6. Social Analytics
7. Context-Aware Computing
8. Storage Class Memory
9. Ubiquitous Computing
10. Fabric-Based Infrastructure and Computers

via Greg Hardin

Todd Zeigler at The Bivings Report asks What’s this HTML 5 Thing? In this brief but useful post he links to an eye-opening video of the Bing search engine’s enhanced HTML 5 version which exemplifies the types of things that are possible with this new standard.

Roy Tennant has an excellent article on Managing Personal Change in his Library Journal Digital Libraries column. He raises several good points about change, here are a few of my favorites:

Don’t clutch old technologies when you should be tossing them aside. The natural human tendency is to cleave to what we know, and to view anything new with suspicion. There are good parts of this tendency, but so too there are some bad. Staying with outdated technologies too long because they are familiar and we feel comfortable in our mastery of them are reasons that are weak and unjustifiable.

Look forward. Ever, ever, look forward. Because that is the present you will soon inhabit. Because that is the force that will shape your life — with or without your permission or acquiescence. Because that is what you hope to make better.

Don’t blindly embrace the new. Not every technology that comes down the pike is worth your time and attention. It may be worth enough time to assess it, but don’t think just because it is new and shiny that it should be immediately embraced. For my money, virtual worlds — at least at this point — are of this variety. There was a time when Second Life was the toast of the Internet. Is it central to what you do now? Likely not.

via Tame the Web

Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers writes about 11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year. These are eleven goals that would benefit any teacher’s skill set. Be sure and read the full article for his commentary on these helpful suggestions:

1. Build a Blog or Build a Better Blog
2. Build a Wiki With Your Students
3. Build a Website
4. Create Videos Without Purchasing any Equipment
5. Create Maps to Tell a Story
6. Try Backchanneling in Your Classroom
7. Join a Social Network for Your Professional Development
8. Use an Online Service to Save Your Bookmarks
9. Get Your Students Searching More Than Just Google.com
10. Have Your Students Create Podcasts
11. Eliminate Inbox Overload

Alex Golub, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, shares his views on The iPad for Academics at Inside Higher Ed.

“Teachers and students have always been an important market for Apple — a fact made clear by the tremendous amount of spit and polish that went into the new education website the company recently unveiled. But honestly: What do Apple’s slickly produced promo videos of adorable multicultural elementary schoolers have to do with us? And just how relevant is their newly-released iPad for what we do? Do academics really need to shell out five hundred bucks for what is essentially a big iPod touch?”

via American Libraries Direct

The ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee has published the 2010 top ten trends in academic libraries. This list was created based on their in-depth review of the current literature. Here are their top trends:

1. Academic library collection growth is driven by patron demand and will include new resource types.
2. Budget challenges will continue and libraries will evolve as a result.
3. Changes in higher education will require that librarians possess diverse skill sets.
4. Demands for accountability and assessment will increase.
5. Digitization of unique library collections will increase and require a larger share of resources.
6. Explosive growth of mobile devices and applications will drive new services.
7. Increased collaboration will expand the role of the library within the institution and beyond.
8. Libraries will continue to lead efforts to develop scholarly communication and intellectual property services.
9. Technology will continue to change services and required skills.
10. The definition of the library will change as physical space is repurposed and virtual space expands.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

Greg Ferenstein at Mashable discusses How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement by increasing participation and building a community of learners.

“Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.”

Greg Ferenstein at Mashable blogs about How Social Gaming is Improving Education. The article discusses how schools are replacing textbook learning with social video games, and improving learning outcomes.

“Social gaming has a come a long way from the days when a dozen students would squint at a 10-inch screen of Oregon Trail. The 2000s seemed to be the decade of case studies: Bold educators willing to experiment with developing technologies. But now, the involvement of major funders, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, points to an industry that is on the cusp of freeing education from its 2D textbook prison.”

It’s always interesting to see the unique ways that researchers and educators find to use new social media tools. Jeff Young at Wired Campus reports on the TwHistory group who are retelling historical events in real-time on Twitter based on journals and histories in What Lincoln Would Have Tweeted.

“A graduate student at Utah State University is a new kind of Civil War re-enactor. Instead of dressing up in period clothes, the student, Tom Caswell, uses Twitter to send short messages in the voice of Abraham Lincoln and other historical figures.

Mr. Caswell is one of the organizers of TwHistory, a Web site devoted to historical re-enactments via Twitter. For their first event, they staged the battle of Gettysburg in the voices of a handful of key characters, including Lincoln (whose famous speech there is, appropriately, famous for its brevity).”

The 2009 EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee has identified five technology trends which impact higher education which include cyberinfrastructure and high-performance computing, open-source learning management systems, product managers in IT organizations, information resource management technologies for libraries, and IT service management. What Technology? Reflections on Evolving Services summarizes the key findings of the committee.

“These white papers address many other strategic areas for each evolving technology: key questions to ask; the implementation challenges; the major vendors and how to judge among them; how to proceed and the issues to be addressed; and the likely impacts in the next three to five years.”

Jeff Young at The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s Wired Campus asks: Could Google Wave Replace Course-Management Systems?

“Google argues that its new Google Wave system could replace e-mail by blending instant messaging, wikis, and image and document sharing into one seamless communication interface. But some college professors and administrators are more excited about Wave’s potential to be a course-management-system killer.”

On October 2nd, Educause will offer a free live Web seminar Emerging Technologies in Higher Education: Big School Solutions to Small School Problems. Presenter John O’Keefe, Director of Academic Technologies and Network Services at Lafayette College will discuss “major developments over the past five years (from Shibboleth to Internet2 to MPLS to iTunes U) that can help smaller schools both address and transform their technology needs.”